Adspecta Historiae, or, Glimpses of History
by OldFashionedGirl95
Summary: Ten ficlets on Ivy the Maid, the last King before the Winter, the Stone Table, the writing systems of Narnia, the Last Queen before the Telmarines, and why Lucy calls Peter "Rabbit."


**AN2: Hopefully, I have learned my lesson about Google Translate after messing up both my title and LA's. Thanks, Calyn, for fixing them.  
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**AN: WillowDryad proposed the challenge and procured the list of words. Laura Andrews, MissShakespeare, and Willow herself were normal about it and wrote drabblish stuff about familiar things, leaving me to see how much of my personal head-canon I can fit into a hundred words or less. **

**I've retained the word-numbers used by Laura, MissS, and Willow, but I've reorganized the ficlets themselves into roughly chronological order for ease of reading. Many thanks to Saoirse7 and WritingMum for their help with some of these.  
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**Any characters you don't recognize are mine, with due respect to owners of original characters, and bonus points for the reader who spots the crossover-in-passing.  
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**Notes:  
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**(#2) Saoirse7 and my mum both pointed out that "Judgement," sounds like it's about Aslan. It's not.  
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**(#3, 6) "Stray" and "Grammar" are both about "King Frank the Lost" from "The Forgotten."  
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**Thank you, and be sure to look for the other three collections of ficlets on these prompts, by WillowDryad, Laura Andrews, and MissShakespeare72!  
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**1. Bonus**

Mrs. Macready never knew the explanation behind that sudden bout of homesickness. Ivy, after she became Ivy Maggs and after she was mixed up in adventures of her own, was privileged to hear it all.

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**4. Nappy**

In that burgeoning, flourishing, blossoming land, bursting with life and dripping with magic, it was less than a year before Helen brought forth her firstborn son—Narnia's firstborn prince.

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**5. Shilly-Shally**

The emissary had finished his tale of woe and the court awaited the King's response. He could almost hear his father's voice, "Don't shilly-shally, Gale!" He did not. "Aye. I shall return with thee and undertake to slay thy dragon."

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**2. Judgement**

In the idyllic days of old, when Swanwhite ruled in Narnia and flowers floated on a southern breeze, the ancient Stone slept in magic-wreathed silence, but the silver-bright peace of those days dimmed long ago, splashed with the spreading stain of Human blood as the Kings of Adam's race fought among themselves.

Now, another snow-white Queen has swept in on a cold northern wind and killed upon that weathered altar the last Human King.

The pallid snow that whirls on the North Wind mingles with the cooling blood of Man to freeze on that sacred, ancient stone.

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**6. Stray**

She never knew just where her absent-minded husband found the little orphan boy with the watchful brown eyes, who could tell them his name (Frank) and his age (three), but nothing of his family or home. He was an imaginative child: talking to the trees; caring tenderly for the sick birds and injured kittens collected by his father; and confiding only in his friend the tawny-orange cat. His mother did not understand him, but she loved him dearly and did her best to bring him up in the way he should go. From it he did not depart.

**3. Grammar**

At first, quiet little Frank had an old-fashioned way of speaking, but he lost even the traces of accent by the time he was old enough to start school.

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**9. Cursive**

All the countries of that world spoke English, but each with its own dialect and way. Susan loved the spidery Archenlandish script, Peter soon could read the Dwarfish runes, and Lucy used rough Telmarine capitals for her own writing until Susan caught her and made her use cursive. But Edmund thought that the strange Calormene writing—with its vowel-squiggles balanced atop the swooping, curling consonants—would never make sense.

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**7. Bunny**

When Lucy was very small, her big brother Peter read Beatrix Potter to her. She thought it funny to call him Peter Rabbit, and he laughed and tickled her. When Lucy was bigger, her most-unbunnylike warrior of a brother read and wrote declarations of war, and sometimes she still called him Rabbit. As long as she remembered that it was "Rabbit" and not "Bunny," though, he remembered to laugh and tickle her. Most of the time.

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**8. Expressionist**

Eustace, thankfully, never made another limerick, but sometimes he forgot himself and blathered on about art.

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**10. Contrite**

Once they were married, her new husband brought Human troops to strengthen the threadbare Narnian army. He helped Archenland repel Calormene raids and drove the Giants back beyond the Shribble. When the navy was falling apart and he told her they hadn't the strength to rebuild, she knew he was right. When he suggested Narnian estates for his captains, she thought it wise. When the newly-landed gentry sent for foreign brides, she said nothing. But when her husband died, she realized she had been a fool, for it was then that she heard him called—Caspian the Conqueror.

_~ consumatum est ~_


End file.
